by Janny Wurts
Set under the pressured scrutiny of armed men, the simplistic show of incompetence assumed a sinister aspect.
Tarens’s qualm was more than the offshoot of anxiety. Unaccustomed to lies, distressed by the deception of his honest fellows, he wrestled the uncomfortable fact he knew nothing of Arin’s past background. The man showed enough evidence of true talent to condemn him as a sorcerer out of hand. If yesterday’s kindness was just as effortlessly feigned as today’s show of bumptious stupidity, the pitfalls loomed deep beyond measure.
Which jagged concern could not be addressed on the march in a snake-pit of militant dedicates. No bald-faced ruse, however disarming, could shield him from the horror of fire and sword if a diviner’s Sight unmasked signs of a renegade talent. Tarens stayed in step and withstood his frayed nerves. Pitifully as his companion might plead, the forced march carried on without let-up. The wretched toll of fatigue shortened tempers. The brutes who got bashed each time Arin tripped became less inclined to humour him. Trickled sweat itched under thick woolen clothes, and squelched steps through soft footing pressed the least hardened men to puffed breath and leaden exhaustion. When Arin’s inept balance jostled two neighbours into a puddled pot-hole, the splash doused the bull-necked fellow in front. Despite the drill sergeant’s annoyed reprimand, the sprayed victim swung a furious fist at his fly-weight offender.
Arin salvaged his gaffe by an opportune trip that dropped him face-down in the road. The thrown punch he escaped ripped onwards through air and clipped the jaw of the chap just behind: one whose filled boot blundered into the pot-hole. The strayed blow rocked him back in a windmill stagger that nearly flattened the men on both sides. Incensed curses acquired a poisonous edge, with Arin’s hapless sprawl the ripe target for the vengeful kicks of his upset neighbours.
Prostrate, plastered to the eyebrows with mud, he foiled the mob with a clownish kiss planted on the toe of the nearest man’s boot. That antic roused gut peals of laughter, broken up as the drill-sergeant’s shout hazed the ragged line back to formation.
Tarens kept his head down throughout, harrowed enough to be grateful the manic display let him stay unobtrusive. At each step, he shrank under the relentless dread that his mangled nose might expose him to his enemies. At least his hunched posture no longer stood out from the greenhorns distressed by their sore feet and blisters.
The troop’s trumpeter sounded the midday halt before the most tender among them limped beyond the hope of remedy. While the column paused, a red-cloaked surgeon made his brusque round to attend the afflicted. The tired recruits sat on the bare ground to rest. They wolfed down their ration of smoked meat and biscuit, while the dismounted lance troops lounged on camp stools, and the officers dined off porcelain plates, under the shelter of awnings. Least privileged of all, the ragged horse-boys, squires, and grooms snatched their meal on the run as they curried the spent destriers and transferred saddles and gear onto the string of remounts.
Tarens surveyed the activity, perched to one side on a tree-root. Separate from his friend as a prudent precaution, he listened through the flow of wisecrack remarks to the tidbits of rumour around him. Frustration ran high, after fruitless patrols had pulled this company away from its accustomed duty at the south border. Eager speculation still rehashed the stories surrounding the temple’s escaped murderer.
‘. . . said to have been rescued by fiends, then sprung by spellcraft out of locked shackles.’
‘Disappeared clean! A huntsman in that tavern claimed not a track marked the country-side after fresh snow. No one in the Light’s service has ever seen an uncanny feat to match that.’
‘Do you really think the condemned was a minion in league with the Spinner of Darkness?’
‘Could be. My grand uncle said he heard a Koriathain lay claim that the Master of Shadow once conjured a plague of fiends. Turned them to work his fell bidding, she said, though he argued he didn’t see how such was possible.’
While a passing equerry scoffed that the priesthood at Erdane spouted too much idle wind, an adamant pikeman assured that his cousin had been an eye-witness. ‘He insisted the pins on those shackles were sheared! Not by a chisel or saw, I tell you. The steel was razed clean, slick as a knife through butter. If not an act of deep spellcraft, what natural force could’ve done that?’
‘Your cousin,’ jeered someone, ‘was cross-eyed with drink!’
‘Not likely,’ a grinning companion cut in. ‘Shamsin’s too pious. Born with his neb in the watch captain’s backside, and a festering stickler for the Light’s duty!’
‘You’ll be that yourself, soon,’ someone else quipped, to a smatter of laughter. ‘Swinging a blade in a prissy white tunic, defending the louts in the market against something bat-shaped and Dark-spawned.’
‘Not amusing if we’re actually faced with the next rise of evil!’ somebody shouted back. ‘Why else should we be dispatched through the country-side for what amounts to an off-season muster? Best take due warning. If Darkness stirs after two hundred years, the same moves that foiled the temple’s diviners could be a sure sign o’ the Shadow Master himself!’
Tarens managed not to choke on his biscuit. A stone’s throw behind, the unlikely author of infamous deeds crouched with his forehead rested upon folded arms and propped knees. Apparently nodded off in a catnap, Arin did not appear to be either dangerous or deadly. The cluster of men seated nearest joked about milksop prandeys at his expense. As their ceaseless taunts skirted the threat of rough play, Tarens smothered the protective urge to intervene. His jangled nerves were no match for the stakes of the strategy set into motion.
If Arin deliberately angled to get himself tossed out of camp as a ham-handed nuisance, his blistering wiles at least required the staunch backing of patience from his less facile companion. Resolved to hold back for the sake of discretion, Tarens missed the disastrous evidence that none of Arin’s miscued awkwardness had been staged by intent.
Nothing prepared Arin for shock of an atmosphere well worn to familiarity: some part of his past had known, all too well, the martial taints of winter-wet wool, sweat, and goose grease. The spiked tang of the rust etched into oiled chain-mail rocked him off balance, until he tumbled in and out of bouts of waking vision that could have been glimpsed scraps of memory, or prescience. Whatever the cause, reliving or foresight, his traumatized senses repeatedly reeled to the sickening reek of fresh blood.
Arin jammed his forehead against his taut wrists, unable to maintain his focus. As discipline failed, he fell back upon sound, and engaged his wits by interpreting the noisy activity about him. Turmoil at the horse pickets informed him of a messenger’s arrival with urgent dispatches from the Light’s temple at Erdane. Hot news from the far north, relayed to the troop captain, raised a stir among the grouped officers. Taut as a plucked wire, Arin spun to the shift as their dizzy rush of emotional charge scattered ripples into the flux. He fought to shut down, leash the hectic bursts that sparked his sensitivity into untoward stimulation. Hands clamped to mask an onslaught of trembling, he closed his eyes and fought his breath steady.
His best effort did nothing to stem the rush of his runaway faculties. Worse, he broke into a clammy sweat when someone nearby drew a sword and plied a pumice stone to scour his steel. The raw scrape savaged Arin’s peeled nerves. He swayed, unravelled by yet another harsh surge of displacement.
He knew the cold thrust of a blade in his guts, and felt the agony of a man, dying. His passage or another’s, he could not tell which; the taste of bile soured his throat as his muscles spasmed in extremis.
Not real; not now; what he felt was not present. Arin strained to anchor himself. Huddled upon the hard winter ground, arms clenched to suppress his uncontrolled shivering, he waited for the clean chill in the air to centre his unmoored perception. His unruly senses overturned anyhow. He gouged his thumbs into his temples to drive down another explosive irruption. The call to march must find him on his feet. No choice remained! He must cling to appearances and
endure, since no haven lay within reach to grant him the quiet he needed for respite. Unstrung to confusion, he feared, above all, that his lapse might waken enough suspicion to drag Tarens to shared destruction. Concern for the one friend he had in the world drove his panicked need to stifle the maelstrom inside of him.
Arin held on, though surrounding noises struck him too loud, and the least small disturbance upended reason. He choked off his scream as the jingle of a bystander’s mail shirt triggered the next blast of hallucination. He saw, not today’s idle men paused at ease amid civilized farmland: but another place of dank mist and jaggedly rocky terrain, sprawled with war dead; and after these, other corpses, fallen in graphic slaughter under a green canopy of summer forest. The re-echoed torment of those fatalities drowned his identity, and much worse. He heard again the pealed cries of terrorized women and children put to death in a frenzy of massacre.
Retching and sick, Arin hauled his wits from the morass. Doubled over, distressed, he struggled to steady his volatile awareness and stay fixed on his current surroundings: a place in full sun, where horses stamped, and a freckled groom whistled a plangent air, and a living soldier slapped a comrade’s back and chaffed with derisive humour.
‘. . . and I say the whole business is overblown nerves and hysterical fear of the Dark! Not even sorcerers walk without tracks!’
The horse-boy’s tune ceased. ‘Well, they do,’ he declaimed with smug conviction. The lathered courier’s mount on his lead rein backed up his claim to authority. ‘The messenger closeted with our captain carries urgent news from the north.’ More avid bystanders quieted to hear as the boy related, ‘There’s a second case of a condemned sorcerer who freed himself from locked chains. The official report says he broke out of a cell, blindsided two guards and every posted dedicate sentry, then vanished from Lorn with nary a trace.’
‘Hogwash!’ a man scoffed. ‘Two random events a hundred leagues distant? How could they be connected?’
‘Could well be they are,’ a companion argued.
Then the trumpeter’s call to form ranks cut the chatter. Men grumbled, stood up, adjusted their belts, and shambled back into formation. Arin assumed his place with the rest. What few bites of food he had eaten did nothing to settle his light-headed queasiness. Movement would help, and the cold breeze if he lasted until the midday sun waned. He must hold out, at least until nightfall provided the opening to slip away.
The company halted at twilight and camped beside a marshy, ox-bow lake carved out by the river before the channel was dredged straight for barges. The site was not remote, or even quiet, bounded to the west by the active trade-road and the torch-lit berm of the tow-path. If the site posed a natural deterrent to deserters, the cover of darkness eased the cranked pitch of Tarens’s anxiety. Between the haphazard scatter of cookfires and the tent shelters crowded with boisterous men, the deep shadows made his bashed nose less obvious. When the temperature plunged, he pulled up his high collar and scarf and muffled his damaged features.
The confidence of anonymity let him keep a closer watch on his erratic companion. One more man’s entrained interest would scarcely draw notice – not since the barrage of ungainly mishaps made Arin the butt of the drill-sergeant’s animosity. The party of griped recruits swelled into a crowd, with more idle veterans strolled up to enjoy the diversion as the sting of petty annoyances dealt Arin a round of light-duty punishment.
On his knees for an hour with a bucket and rag, he was made to clean the mud from the boots of any man wanting a polish. The cold numbed his raw hands and unstrung his dexterity. Fine-boned as the musician he claimed to be, he became mocked as a pampered ornament. Then what appeared to be effete incompetence upset the bucket just refilled to rinse his clogged rag.
While the nearest onlookers jounced back from the flood, the ribald soldier seated with splashed ankles elbowed his neighbour. ‘D’you suppose the git’s as much of a disaster, cut loose in the sheets with his whanger?’
‘Light forbid! Wrecks my digestion to think such a pathetic jape ever stood his pole up to breed offspring!’
‘Let’s buy him a wench!’ a bystander yelled. ‘We could watch. See whether he knows how to grope the right hole or unties his own drawers without tangling his equipment!’
The coarse gibes passed over Arin’s bent head as he gasped his breathless apology. Hunched and shivering, with his trousers and jacket front drenched, he groped after the bucket’s rope handle and stumbled erect. A squelching step reeled him towards the lake-side to recoup his sloppy mistake.
‘Save us! He minces!’ The outburst of laughter widened his audience, and banter erupted around him like cross-fire. ‘How long do you think he’ll survive without being cosseted in a rich lady’s boudoir?’
‘A day, perhaps,’ a burly pikeman shouted back, then jingled his coin pouch in a shameless invitation to take prospective wagers.
Tarens’s uneasy stance became jostled as others pushed in to enjoy the affray. More than their raucous amusement disturbed him. Those same fingers, engaged in rough labour before, had never displayed tonight’s show of maladroit fumbling. As the servile round of boot cleaning gave way to the task of collecting the recruits’ soiled food bowls, the stakes became piquantly raised. Arin staggered under a tipsy stack of crockery piled with chewed bones and food scraps.
‘For Light’s sake, stand back,’ a roisterer cried, ‘before he lands on some luckless fool and delivers a lapful of garbage!’
The warning did not seem an empty threat: Arin’s fierce frown and intense concentration did little to steady his tottering steps. The role he played was too brilliantly close, among soldiers galled reckless by boredom. Worse, the sharp drill-sergeant welcomed the chance to keep his fractious troop in high fettle. He made no effort to curtail their sport but smirked with crossed arms while the horse-play turned cruel, and a bystander snaked out a vengeful foot to trip up the gullible victim.
Arin fell hard, sprawled over two other men’s knees, while the upset bowls flew, hurling cold gobbets of gravy. The mess touched off a clamour of furious shouts. One splattered victim unsheathed his sword. Other bystanders recoiled, while Arin rammed backwards, cat-quick to evade as the angered brute lunged through the scramble to skewer him.
The flicker of fire-light lit his face and exposed a blanched fear that froze Tarens’s blood. The crude sham had gone irretrievably wrong. But the chain of misfortune unreeled too fast to attempt an intervention.
‘May as well spit the wretch properly,’ goaded the man whose lap had received the revolting brunt. Bedecked in thrown gristle, he drew a main gauche and hurled the blade at the gutless offender.
The weapon flew point first through the dark.
Without a glance over his shoulder, never turning a hair, Arin ducked and snatched the blade from mid flight. His hand closed on the thrown grip with practiced experience: once, twice, in blinding fast form, he parried the swordsman’s impetuous attack. The defensive moves damned him for speed and sheer brilliance. All question died, that he had ever been the inept musician he claimed, prone to feckless clumsiness.
To yells from the side-lines and whoops of encouragement, Arin’s murderous antagonist bore in to finish the fight. A tough, career soldier with a powerful reach, he raised his heavier weapon for a classic stroke. Arin checked the blow with a high block. Blade clanged on cross-guard, a shrill ring that drilled across an abrupt, fallen quiet. Arin gasped. As though the sound opened the flood-gates to nightmare, he dropped to one knee and flung the dagger away as though burned. Crouched helpless and retching, he bent with his nape exposed to the next killing blow.
Tarens shoved forward, but not fast enough. The sergeant’s rush barged him aside and curbed the aggressive scrap short of a fatality. But the turbulent charge on raised tempers stayed ugly. Denied a lethal quittance, the onlookers seethed with unspent excitement. Aghast, Tarens belatedly realized that his friend’s sharp collapse was brought on by a vicious reliving.
Whatever p
ast poison such memory contained, the rip tide drove Arin to mindless anguish. His visceral cry pealed against mob-fed outrage, primed yet to seize retribution.
Tarens elbowed to push through, cut off in the press as the troop sergeant’s discipline failed, and the disaffected mob closed upon Arin. He offered no fight. Dragged upright by a score of hostile fists, he returned not a whimper of protest. His opened eyes appeared without focus, inwardly fixed on the vista of some savage, unknown atrocity. Which limp unresistence only annoyed the dog-pack circle of his oppressors. Before the camp’s senior officers took notice and bore in on the scuffle gone riot, the ringleaders wrestled off Arin’s coat. The sleeves of his shirt tore under their mauling and bared the pale flesh underneath to the fire-light.
The inevitable shout of salacious discovery broke over the tumult. ‘Light protect us! Looks like he’s got shackle marks on his wrists.’
‘Do you see? This wretch has the scars of a convicted felon!’
‘Back off! Move aside!’ The sergeant muscled his way to the fore and confirmed the shocking, grim evidence. ‘By glory, we’ll get to the bottom of this! Have yon scoundrel strung up from that tree until he gives over the truth.’
Though the weals were long since healed white, the upstaged officer seized on the evidence to appease his insubordinate troop. ‘If a criminal’s dared to swear into this company on false grounds, I’ll make him an example you men won’t forget! For lying, the wretch will be put to the lash. Then the captain decides whether his case merits a summary execution.’
Tarens was forced to observe from the side-lines. Choked silent, afraid, he wondered how long he had before someone recalled the two fugitives on the lam from the Light’s justice. Alone, he could not deflect the armed might of a dedicate company. Should Arin betray the least sign of born talent, the mistake would set off a witch-hunt. Pinioned, his slight stature posed no one a threat. But the display of polished aptitude with edged weapons must open a stiff round of questions. Without solid answers backed up by hard proof, his dilemma would only get deeper.
